


Ironbelly

by essential_dreaming (madmarian)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate POV, Dragons, Gen, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Freeform, Unfortunate Goblins, minor character pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25528711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madmarian/pseuds/essential_dreaming
Summary: A familiar moment from an unfamiliar perspective.
Kudos: 16





	Ironbelly

Tension. She smells it. Like fear that has not yet begun. 

After the noise, the warning, she is waiting, listening, sniffing the air. Something is different. There are new smells, new creatures. She has not known the scent of a new creature in a long time.

She is waiting, and the tension is growing. She hears noises, at first muffled--screams, bangs, the sound of gold--yes, gold, she knows the sound well, as all her kind do--and then creatures quickly approaching. 

More shouts, angry, from the Way In, the way that they always approached, the Way In from which came the noise, the warning, the pain. 

She shrinks into the shadows, waiting, sniffing, listening.

From the one side, the unfamiliar creatures are coming back, and from the other, the Ones, the Ones who always come, the Ones with the noise and the pain. 

But the noise and pain do not come. They shout, scream in their tiny gibbers that echo in the chamber around her. There are shouts from both sides now, and sounds she remembers, sounds and shouts of particular shape that echo in her mind. She knows those sounds. 

_She remembers:  
The creatures. There were only a few of them, but they were strong. They kept her chained, subdued with their shouts and the flashes that made her sleep. But sometimes, she would fly. Soar strong into the sky, seek out the giant clouds of noise and darkness and make them burn, burn, until they dropped from the sky. But always, after, there were chains, and creatures controlling the chains. She remembered the chains. She remembered the sky._

Those sounds are not for her. The creatures are screaming but she does not sleep. There is no warning. The pain does not come. 

She steps forward, roaring her own warning, and before any pain or sleep can come, she breathes out her fire upon them. There are more shouts, more screams, and fear, so much fear in the air. She breathes it in. This is not her own fear. It is theirs. 

More shouts, getting nearer to her, and she pours more flame toward the Way In, where the fear is now strongest. She feels no fear now, only anger, only the need to strike while she can, while the noise and the pain are at bay. She will make them burn, burn, and drop into the sea. 

She forgets the chain and lunges forward, eager to find them, to burn them, but there is no familiar pull, rasping on her scales, digging at her flesh. The chains do not stop her. The chains are gone. 

She is in the earth, and must go up. She opens her wings--so stiff, so cramped, they sear with pain, but yet, she rises. The Way In. She flies toward it. She smells rock and decay ahead, and blasts a bright path of fire. The rocks crumble, knocking her downward, sending pain searing through her, but she pushes on, shrugging the scorched stone aside, squeezing past and climbing up the slope ahead. What is pain to her now? She is climbing. She is rising away from the noise, rising toward the sky. She remembers the sky. 

_She remembers:  
The dark clouds, the rank floating beasts with their droning noise, invading her sky. When the creatures kept her chained, she could still smell them, smell their dank, oily scent, metal and fume, the burning and booming of their own acrid fire. And with the scent came pain, such pain and agony. When she could fly, when the chains let her take flight into her sky, she had to burn the clouds, these bringers of pain. They burned bright. She remembered the brightness, the beautiful flame, as they fell in slow arcs toward the ocean below. She wanted to hunt, to find them all, burn them all, but then came the chains, the shouts and flashes, returning to earth to feed, and then to sleep again._

More rock, more barriers ahead. She sears the cave again and again, loosing all the fire she could not use against the Ones with the noise and the pain. She hears a shout, quite near, and more shouts, but sleep does not come. The seared rocks tumble around her, striking her sore body, scraping her raw scales, but she climbs, she climbs, using muscle and wing and fire to rise ever higher. The sky. She must find it. 

The ceiling at last, the final barrier looms ahead. More shouts, more flame. She is nearly there. She lunges, and the ceiling bursts upward. She climbs into a space with light--hazy--and she knows the cave has ended. She also smells the Ones--more of them, everywhere, and she roars her rage. The light is brighter overhead--she must get to the light, to the sky. She spreads her wings and flies through a barrier she could not see or smell, but it is weak, and shatters around her. She perches there, gripping a narrow precipice for a moment, knowing the Ones are below her, knowing the sky is above. She breathes the fresh, bright air. At last. At last, she has found the sky. 

_She remembers:  
The creatures were few, but strong. They shouted and chained and made her to sleep. But there was one, a familiar one, who spoke with a soft voice, who brought her food and took away the pain from the dark clouds that stank of death. She remembers it--small like all of them, defenseless and frail, but it never smelled like fear. All the creatures were afraid. But this one had not been. She remembers. A sore wing, a cutting chain, and its hands taking away the pain. She remembers it did shout, at the other creatures, but never at her, never at the others like her. She remembers it disappeared, and then the Ones came, and she was brought to that cave, to that darkness and chains and noise and pain. She will always remember. Her kind does not forget._

She would like to burn them all, those Ones, but now...the sky is here, and she can smell the light, the warmth. She fills her lungs with it. Cramped from years bent low, years of stench and decay and ever-growing darkness, they ache from the filling, but she breathes it in, again and again, the fresh, healing light from the sky above. 

And she smells it, tastes it in the wind: Home. It is very, very far. But her wings work still, and what is pain to her now? She spreads them in the sunlight and roars her triumph. She launches herself into the sky. 

Northward. 

Home. 

_~Finis~_


End file.
